Ruth Whitehouse

Research Interests

My main research area since I graduated has been
prehistoric Italy, situated within a wider interest in the West
Mediterranean in general. Within this area, I have pursued a wide range
of different topics, but which generally share an emphasis on societal
aspects of the past. One of the broad themes is absolute chronology,
involving especially the acquisition, publication and discussion of
radiocarbon dates. For the last fifteen years I have developed a
special interest in prehistoric religion and ritual, focusing on a
series of 'underground' sites used for ritual activities. More recently
I have developed an interest in gender in archaeology, both at a
general level and in connection with prehistoric Italy. My most recent
interest is in writing and literacy in first millennium BC Italy,
developed in the context of two successive AHRC-funded research
projects:

Developmental Literacy and the
Establishment of Regional and State Identity in early Italy: Research
beyond Etruria, Greece and Rome , which dealt with the three areas of Northwest Italy, Southeast Italy, and Northwest Italy and ran from 2003 to 2005

Etruscan Literacy in its Social Context 800–400 BC,
concerned with Etruria and the neighbouring areas in which Etruscans
settled and with which they had close contact (principally Latium,
Campania and Umbria, but also the Po plain), which ran from 2005 to
2008. [Literacy in Early Italy website]

I have been involved in field projects in Italy and elsewhere since the
1960s and have jointly directed three major projects (see below). I am
interested in the theory and methodology of archaeological fieldwork,
especially survey. Most recently I have been involved, with Sue
Hamilton and others, in the development of methods for practising
phenomenologically-oriented fieldwork.

Current project

The Tavoliere-Gargano Prehistory Project ran
fieldwork seasons from 2002 to 2008 and is currently in the writing-up
stage. Several articles have been published and the final two-volume
report is scheduled for publication in 2010. It is funded by the
British Academy, the Institute of Archaeology, UCL and the National
University of Ireland, Galway, while a companion project concerned with
the archiving of WWII aerial photographs is funded by the Leverhulme
Trust. The project is concerned with the investigation of the
relationships between the adjacent but contrasting zones of the
Tavoliere plain and the Gargano promontory in southeast Italy in later
prehistory (Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages). It concentrates on the
social use and organisation of landscape and taskscape locales and the
relationships of domestic, specialist and ritual sites of these areas
at three different scales: regional, inter-site and intra-site. The
work combines innovative and traditional surface survey and mapping
methods and aims to isolate both period specific and inter-period
trajectories of space as it was utilised, understood and experienced by
later prehistoric societies and individuals.

Earlier projects

1. 1978-1985. Excavation and survey at the Iron Age site
of Gravina in Puglia in southern Italy. This large inland hilltop
settlement site was occupied throughout most of the first millennium
BC. It offers the opportunity to study a local community through a
thousand years which witnessed the arrival first of Greek settlers in
the area and later the military power of Rome. The aim of the work at
Botromagno was directed at elucidating the nature and impact of
relationships between the local community and these external groups in
the context of concerns with issues of identity, ethnicity and local
dynamics of state formation and urbanism. The final report was
published in 2000 as Botromagno. Excavation and Survey at Gravina in Puglia, 1979-1985 (jointly with John Wilkins and Edward Herring).

2. 1986 - present. Surface archaeology in the Po plain.
This project (the Alto-Medio Polesine -Basso Veronese Project) is
jointly organised and directed with colleagues from the University of
Padua. Its dual aims are, on the one hand, to develop the theory and
methodology of surface archaeology and, on the other, to throw light on
the environment and archaeology of an area of the eastern Po plain
south of Verona. Occupation of the survey area seems to have been
mainly in the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC) and the Roman period, with
a virtual abandonment in the intervening Iron Age and only sparse
post-Roman occupation before the land drainage schemes of recent
centuries. In fact successful exploitation of this wetland area,
characterised in the past by frequently changing river formations and
major flooding episodes, seems to have depended on active water
management. Not only do we have much information on the Roman
centuriation system of land division and drainage in the survey area,
but we also have evidence of water management in the Bronze Age
(definitely drainage and probably also irrigation). Interim reports
have appeared annually in Quaderni di Archeologia del Veneto (in Italian) and Accordia Research Papers (in English) and a monograph on the project is currently in preparation.

Collaborations

Accordia Research Institute

My long-term concern with developing interest in Italian
archaeology in Britain, and especially in supporting young scholars
working in this and related fields, led me to become a founder member
in 1988 of the Accordia Research Centre, then based at Queen Mary and
Westfield College, University of London. Accordia is concerned with the
encouragement of a wide range of research into early Italy (including
archaeology, history, art history and historical geography); it
organises lectures, seminars, conferences and exhibitions and is also a
publishing house, producing an annual journal, the Accordia Research
Papers, as well as monographs and collected papers. Since the closure
of the parent department at QMW in 1993, Accordia, renamed the Accordia
Research Institute, has functioned as a quasi-independent research
centre, based at the Institute of Archaeology. I continue to be closely
involved with the work of Accordia: I am on the management board, and
am an editor of the journal and chair of the publication committee. [Accordia website]

British School at Rome

I have had a long association with the British School at
Rome since my time as a research student. The Gravina excavation was a
BSR project and we spent several summers at the School (during the
period when it is formally closed), using its facilities for
post-excavation projects (in exchange for some care-taking duties!). I
sat on the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters (responsible for
the academic side of the School's activities) through much of the 1980s
and was its Chair from 1988-1992. In autumn 1998 I was in the School
for three months as Balsdon Senior Fellow (jointly with Dr John
Wilkins), working on the Gravina publication. I am currently once again
on the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters, from 2008.

University of Padua

My main current collaboration in Italy is with Dr Armando
de Guio of the Dip. di Scienze di Antichità of l'Università degli Studi
di Padova and with other colleagues who work with him in CISAS (Centro
Internazionale di Studi di Archeologia di Superficie). Our main joint
research project is in the Alto-Medio Polesine - Basso Veronese
Project, but we also collaborate in publication and the organisation of
seminars and conferences. Further collaborative projects are planned
for the future.

Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria

In 1997 I was elected a member of the Istituto Italiano di
Preistoria e Protostoria, based in Florence, the main professional body
for Italian prehistory and publisher of the journal Rivista di Scienze
Preistoriche.